L. Modesitt - Colors of Chaos

Cerryl felt the world twist around him, and for a time he just leaned against the wall gasping. When he looked up, his shields down, in the center of the room remained a drifting pile of white ash.

He walked heavily to the door and gently unlatched it, raising his blur screen as he stepped aside and let the door swing open. The pounding in his head bit through his skull like a disintegrating sawmill blade. He gritted his teeth and waited.

“What happened?” One of the armsmen in the main room bolted to the open door. “Everything’s gone!”

After the first rush to the door, Cerryl waited and eventually slipped through an opening, ignoring the exclamations from the disguised armsmen. Trying to hold his guts and the blur shield together, he walked slowly back along the main street and around the corner to where Lyasa and the lancers waited. He dropped the shield with relief, ignoring the few gasps.

The lancer subofficer reined up beside Lyasa was a dark-haired and hard-faced woman-one of the few women subofficers in the lancers, Cerryl suspected. Beside Lyasa was Cerryl’s mount.

“You’re all right?” asked the black-haired mage.

“I’m fine.” Sort of …He swung up heavily into the saddle, trying to ignore the weakness in his legs, the pounding in his head, and the faint queasiness in his guts.

“This is Subofficer Suzdyal. Mage Cerryl.” Lyasa raised her eyebrows. “Now what?”

“They ought to have arms ready,” Cerryl said.

“What did you do?”

“Arms ready!” snapped Suzdyal. Blades and white-bronze lances glittered in the late-afternoon sun of the fading summer.

“Let’s just say that the plotters all vanished.”

“All five?”

Cerryl offered a twisted smile. “That’s my one skill-removing people who are difficulties. I have to use it too much.”

“I wish more leaders did,” said Suzdyal dryly. “You expecting a riot or something?”

“No. Let’s ride down the side street to the public house.”

As the formed-up lancers approached the public house, several of the disguised armsmen stopped on the street.

“Armsmen, all right,” said Suzdyal. “Locals’d run and get cut down from behind. What’d you want us to do with them?”

Cerryl looked at Lyasa, then looked at the five men standing before the sign of The Brown Boar. He raised his voice. “Let them go, unless they cause trouble. If they do, kill them.”

One of the leather-clad armsmen started to open his mouth. The man next to him elbowed him in the gut and spoke. “He meant nothing, ser mage. We’ll be going peaceably.”

“Good. Spidlar is going to stay peaceful, and people are going to start trading again-out in the open. Those who think otherwise won’t be around long.” Cerryl offered an icy smile but kept his eyes fixed on the men until they slowly began to walk down the street away from the lancers.

Every so often one or another would glance back over a shoulder.

Cerryl kept scanning the area, for anything that might cause problems, with both senses and sight, but could find nothing.

When the shadowed street stood empty, silent, Suzdyal gave Cerryl a quick look. “They’ll tell the others.”

“And?” Cerryl finally wiped the dampness off his forehead.

“There won’t be so many eager the next time some fop flashes silvers before them.”

Cerryl hoped not. “I think we can head back.”

Suzdyal and Lyasa nodded.

WITH SUZDYAL’S LANCERS behind him and Lyasa beside him, Cerryl rode slowly around the square, glancing at the handful of people who moved from shop to shop. Three or four buildings remained shuttered, but most were open, despite the air of sullenness, almost of shock.

The day was cooler than the hot late-summer days that had preceded it, with high hazy clouds and a warmish wind out of the south that brought a dryness to the city. Spidlaria wasn’t as bustling as it doubtless had been once, but people were going through the motions of buying and selling. Sooner or later, because sneaking around was exhausting, most would return to normal-except that there wasn’t enough trade.

“They’re doing what you wanted,” Lyasa said, her voice dry. “They don’t like it much.”

“They’ll get used to it,” answered Suzdyal. “They had to realize that Fairhaven was something different from Gallos or Certis.”

“Because they always used trade as a weapon before?”

The subofficer nodded, her eyes on three men at the corner of the square. “Those three. You might want to ask them a question or two, honored mages.”

Cerryl’s eyes flicked to the hard-muscled trio as he guided his mount toward them, flanked by lancers with drawn blades. Cerryl looked into the tall and bearded man’s flat brown eyes. “You wouldn’t be from Certis, would you?”

“No…ser.”

Cerryl knew even Lyasa could feel that lie.

“And you wouldn’t still be on the viscount’s payroll, would you?”

The man’s eyes flickered to the two lances centered on him. “No…ser. Don’t know no viscount.”

Cerryl smiled and looked to the second man, shorter and burly in stained gray battle leathers. “How about you? Did you come from Certis, too?”

“No, ser.”

Cerryl laughed. “You’re both lying. The viscount paid you to come here and help the old traders cause trouble. Most of them are dead. You keep this up, and you’ll be dead, too. Of course, if you want honest work, you could come to the headquarters and talk to Mage Lyasa. We’ll need some honest and experienced men as patrollers.”

Abruptly he could sense something wrong, and he turned to see the crossbowman on the roof. Whhst! As the first charred figure fell, Cerryl wheeled the gelding and surveyed the square.

Whhst! The second crossbowman tumbled from the side porch of the basket maker’s shop.

Cerryl continued to scan the area, as did Lyasa.

When Cerryl looked back at the two men, he had to concentrate to keep his legs from shaking. Both were pinned against the chandlery wall with lances against their chests. Several townspeople peered around the corner, watching, waiting for him to kill the disguised armsmen.

“ If …if there is one more attempt on anyone from Fairhaven,” Cerryl said loudly, and coldly, “your lives, if you are seen again, are forfeit. We are trying to heal Spidlaria, to put the city back to work. You, and your friends from Certis, seem more interested in destroying it. Is that because Certis fears the folk of Spidlar? I wonder.”

Cerryl turned and nodded to Suzdyal. “Let them go. This time.”

He could feel the eyes on him as he, Lyasa, and the lancer column rode away from the chandlery and then toward the square on the way back to his headquarters.

“…White bastard…”

“…don’t cross him.”

“Fair in his own way…”

“Call destroying five factors fair…had to be him…”

“Certis-he was certain on that.”

“Lies…all lies…”

“…don’t know about that…don’t know at all.”

Cerryl cleared his throat and looked at Lyasa. “You think I was too easy?”

“Maybe.”

“No, begging your pardons, mages,” offered Suzdyal. “Killing the bowmen was fair. Killing a man on the square would have angered ’em so they’d not think.”

Cerryl hoped so, but he was hoping far too much. Among other things, he needed a trader, a good trader-like Layel. He pursed his lips. Well, Layel wouldn’t have much competition in Spidlaria.

“You have an odd look on your face,” Lyasa observed.

“I’m thinking about bringing in a trader-and giving him Reylerk’s establishment.”

“Layel?”

“Why not?”